Solitude, Community, & the Mother of Night
A quiet Yuletide + a sneak peak at a work-in-progress (My first Substack post)
Hello friend.
Some years ago I wrote a piece about our need for the twin companions of solitude and community during the Yuletide season. At the time, my life was full of activity. I was running a business, creating a tarot deck, helping with community events, planning and hosting our annual St. Lucia party, looking after my elderly father, being a wife, a friend, a new grandmother. I was longing for pockets of solitude, even as I thrived on community and connection.
Later on, a rupture in my life came along that included losing a home I cherished, followed by the isolation of the pandemic, followed by a couple of years of chronic illness. It took a while but I’ve come to cherish solitude as a daily companion, even as I treasure my relationships. My body is still in a healing/recovery phase, so I can’t show up for all the gatherings that call to me. Still, I long to make more space for activity in my life, just like I used to be proactive about creating a place for solitude and retreat. Illness and aging tend to give you a different perspective on these things.
This week I’ve been reading Katherine May’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, curled up on the couch, steaming tea at hand, as I recover from a bout of Covid. Reading and napping is such a profound pleasure, especially when a storm howls outside and you’re warm and cozy inside, with candles glowing nearby and a soft blanket tucked around you.
How can I not love a book that uses seasonal metaphors to explore the difficult times in our lives? (By the way, Katherine May’s Substack is one of my favorites.)
She writes: “Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of the outsider.” That’s an apt description of my experience of prolonged illness over the last couple of years.
(BTW It occurs to me that what Katherine May calls “wintering” is very similar — if not essentially the same — as Demetra George’s “dark moon phase,” which she described in her book Mysteries of the Dark Moon: The Healing Power of the Dark Goddess, published back in 1992. That book helped to shape the way I think about the world.)
Katherine May mentions treating herself like a favored child, with love and kindness, at the onset of a personal winter. She soothes herself with food, sleep, and walks, and asks herself “What is this winter all about? What change is coming?”
Those of us who walk an earth-centered path know in our bones that time isn’t linear. All of life moves in a circle, like the seasons, like the moon.
We still have a couple of weeks before Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere. The rebirth of the Sun portends emergence and change in our personal lives as well as in the life of the collective and the life of the earth Herself. But I’m not quite ready to consult the cards about the changes that are coming or to take a peek at the year ahead.
For now, I want more holy darkness. More candles glimmering on my altar. More cups of fragrant tea. More cedar boughs and rose hips gathered in the rain.
My Move to Substack
This is the first e-letter / post I’ve published on the Substack platform, even though I’ve been blogging and sending out e-letters for about 20 years. I hope those of you who were already subscribers to Messages from Sea & Cedar found the move seamless. You may have noticed that the formatting is a bit different and that your email came from a new address, joannapowellcolbert@substack.com. (If you could add the new address to your email contact list, that would be great. Thank you.)
For those of you who have found me here on Substack, welcome! I look forward to connecting with you.
I’m excited about Substack in part because of the potential to create community outside of social media channels, and to be part of the Substack ecosystem. I’m also intrigued by the opportunity to offer different levels of support for my work as a writer and artist. The main e-letter will always be free. But you’ll have the opportunity to be a paid subscriber and receive more in return, including monthly community Wisdom Circle calls on Zoom. I deeply appreciate the person who signed up to be a Founding Member before I had even finished setting this space up!
You can read more about my plans for this space on my About page here on Substack. Thank you for being here.
A sneak peek at the kind of posts paid subscribers will receive …
Blessing of the Mother of Night (Center of the Wheel)
If you’ve been with me for a while (perhaps you took my “Walking the Sacred Wheel” course over the last couple of years) — you know I’m in the process of creating an oracle deck and book based on the Wheel of the Year, the lunar cycle, and the seasons of our lives. (Yes, I’ve been working on it way too long. Or perhaps it’s getting ready to be born in its own sweet time.)
I wrote first-person blessings for the Numinous Beings who preside over each of the eight seasons. The Mother of Night holds the Center of the Wheel. She represents the darkest time of the solar cycle (between Hallows and Solstice) and the darkest time of the lunar cycle (the Balsamic Moon phase, before the New Moon). For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, that’s right now — waning sun, waning moon. The sweet and deepest darkness.
The Center is the liminal space between death and birth. The Old One of Hallowmas dissolves and returns to the tomb/womb of the Mother of Night, preparing to be born again as the Child of Wonder at Winter Solstice.
Here is Her blessing.
I am the Mother of Night, the luminous darkness, the still point of the turning Wheel.
I encompass all your beginnings and all your endings.
May the blessing of Silence be upon you.
May you experience oneness with All That Is, beyond words and beyond time.
May you enter the dreamtime each night and receive my embrace.
May you bring your scattered mind back to center, breathing in, breathing out.
May you find deep rest after a time of trial, renewing your body and your spirit.
May you pause at the center of the labyrinth, offering up your heart to the Great Mystery; then turn to find your way out once more.
I bless you with the fertile darkness of the unknown.
I bless you with a love for liminal times and places, for borderlands, for the spaces in-between.
I bless you with the fullness of emptiness.
I am the Mother of Night.
I am the blank page between the ending of one story and the beginning of another.
Go now, follow the spiral path down secret passageways, and remember me.
When you gaze in awe at a vast ebony sky, remember me.
When insights and epiphanies arise suddenly out of nowhere, remember me.
When you sit quietly in darkness on the Eve of Winter Solstice, remember me.
When your Beloved Dead embrace you in dreams and visitations, remember me.
When you give your heart to the holy hush of night, remember me.
Go now, and know we shall be one.
Today, tonight, and forevermore.
Thank you for listening.
Blessings of Sea & Cedar,
Links to books and decks in this post are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, which means I earn a small commission for any purchases made. Plus you get to support independent bookstores.
About me: I’m Joanna Powell Colbert, creator of the Gaian Tarot and the Pentimento Tarot, and co-creator of the Herbcrafter’s Tarot. I write and teach about tarot, earth-centered spirituality, seasonal & lunar lore, and creativity as a spiritual practice. You can also connect with me on Instagram or Facebook.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything that came up for you in response to this post. (Comments will be a perk for paid subscribers only but today, they’re open to all.)
This painting is so perfect for this time of year. As someone with a farm, who is really into soil science, I was struct how the "fallow" time of the year is one of designed inactivity. When temperatures are low, nothing grows, especially because there is no activity in the soil microbiome. Growth is not so much what we see on the surface, but a product of what is below the soil.
Winter spaces in our lives and psyche are designed to be times not of growth, but stillness, repair, pruning, death and cleansing.
In our western culture we can struggle with these times of "non-productivity", to which I say, "Peeshaw!"
It is with a heart of gratitude (not always at the time) that I give thanks for the wintering!
Oh my Dear Joanna, Your work moves me. The Mother of Night blessings are so timely for me right now. My partner of 20+ years and love of my life died suddenly and unexpectedly on November 15 and I am adrift with pain. I anchor myself being with family and friends, and going through the motions to decorate the home he helped build with me for the holidays, but each night I am alone with my broken heart. I will take the beautiful Mother of Night blessings to my altar each night for solace. Thank you, dear one. Love, Faelind